Maximum Tent Populism

The Classical Liberal, Effective Altruist, and Disaffected Centrist Cases for Populism

I recently interviewed Tyler Cowen and posited that the most important problem to be working on is to displace institutions which wield power despite failing at their ostensive mission, which I call populism. I didn’t fully make that case on this show, so here’s a short article about it.

When I interact with populists, there is only one red line for collaboration or even friendship. You can disagree on economics, abortion, and even immigration, so long as you recognize the one commandment: the ruling class is illegitimate. This one commandment is what I typically mean by populism. It’s a strange usage, since it doesn’t just mean that I’m a populist, but that vast majorities of the American public are. Consider the Edelman Trust Barometer:

You’re telling me sixty-seven percent of Westerners are populists? While this is an outlier, there definitely isn’t remotely that level of support for any single leader or movement. Agreeing with the one commandment doesn’t mean you’ll agree with populists of different stripes on other issues, but it does mean that you’ll be working out your differences with a common understanding rather than enemies. It makes sense. The main cause of the problems populists seek to solve is the same as the main obstacle keeping it from power — prestige institutions. This group of universities, legacy media, and government bureaucracies maintain a permanent, quasi-legal regime through HR laws, government agencies and pressure campaigns.

These observations aren’t unique to populists. Many centrists, moderate, libertarians, and the former liberals such as the “intellectual dark web” have made the same diagnoses of societal problems. Whether it’s the principle-agent problem, unaccountable bureaucrats, “woke mobs”,  institutional decline, or the invisible graveyard, all of these are various flavors of the same pattern. People who hold power — who have the ability to interfere with other people’s lives — continue to hold that power despite consistently failing at their self-described mission. Even progressives and socialists recognize that this is true for an increasing fraction of institutions, even if they are more prone to agreeing with the cultural signalling those institutions use to distract from their failures. 

With that in mind, it isn’t very surprising that two thirds of the world and likely an even larger fraction of Americans would qualify as populist. But unifying those people around a populist movement and populist candidates is far from reality. Populists who agree on the one commandment are split on a plethora of other issues. I’m here to make the case (or three) that they should put the one commandment first and foremost. 

The Simple Case

Simply put, it is impossible to determine what is right and wrong with dishonest institutions. Whether you are a nationalist, centrist, libertarian, never-Trumper, socialist, or progressive, you cannot come together and determine the truth if media — the people in between you and those you disagree with — are not passing along your message honestly. False institutions are a divergence from reality. They create an alternate world where claims do not compete over truth but instead compete over status and corruption. If you believe your ideology is most truthful, it is natural that the first goal is to reverse this process. In short, if you have garbage in between, you’ll get garbage out. 

The Rational Case

In a society, problems can generally be classified into three categories. Type 1 are the problems that are being optimized for. There is a process that solves, corrects, and trains people to succeed by some verifiable measure. Type 1 problems include physics, manufacturing, farming, mathematics, machine learning, and most problems solved by technology or business. Type 2 are the problems that are unoptimized, that are ignored or otherwise generally not paid attention to. These include many startup and academic ideas, which through research, innovation, and entrepreneurship can eventually become Type 1 problems. In general, modern capitalist democracies are quite effective at solving Type 1 through research, free markets, and scaling. The United States in particular is increasingly effective at solving Type 2 problems through venture capital, the scientific method and Effective Altruism. 

Type 3 problems are problems where systems exist which claim to solve the problem, but consistently not just fail, but actively worsen the situation. They are problems which are useful means to some ulterior ends, causing tons of collateral damage in the meantime. The most significant challenges faced by the United States fall into this category. The Covid-19 pandemic and its mismanagement is the greatest example. Racial politics and scapegoating is another. Financial collapse is a third. You will notice some common threads in the origins of these problems. Government bureaucracy, news media, and elected officials play key roles in causing each. This early article is a good summary of this process.

In short, the most altruism that can be done is by turning Type 3 problems into Type 1, or even just Type 2 institutions. For example, if you care about pandemic prevention, a necessary precondition is to forcibly replace the CDC, the FDA, and all major public health bureaucracies. Otherwise they will ban Covid testing and needlessly obstruct vaccines, and implement damaging but ineffective measures all over again. This topic is given extensive treatment in my discussion with Zvi Mowshowitz. It is trivial to see this pattern replicated with life extension, drug development, and dozens of other medical topics. A full treatment of Type 3 instituions, which obstruct almost all effective altruist goals, can (and will) take up a book, so I’ll spare you the rest for now. 

The Vibes Case

A common objection to populism, particularly from Libertarians, centrists, and other third parties, is that they don’t want to be associated with those people. They see populists as mean spirited and crazy, not necessarily unfairly if you take Trump as the primary example. To me, this is an artifact of media power. Greater distribution power allows two things: a more nuanced approach and the ability to cherry-pick enemies. One only needs to compare the candidates of 2020. Joe Biden had legacy media on his side, allowing him to run on vague slogans like “Fight for the Soul of America”. What is the soul of America? How is Biden fighting for it? What would he do in office? All of this was left to interpret, which is an advantage if you have favorable media. Both Trump and Sanders relied on precise, simple slogans. It is hard to misinterpret “Build the Wall” or “Medicare for All”. They are memorable, distinct, and difficult to spin. Any kind of outsider simply has more constraints on what he or she can say. Of course, none of it is to say that Trump or Sanders would suddenly be giving detailed policy speeches once legacy media is delegitimized. It is to say that unless legacy media is delegitimized, those are the only outsider candidates who will even have a chance. Any movement’s public appearance comes from its institutional constraints. Change those constraints and those appearances will vary drastically.

This is most clear from the big tent of movements that are, in my view, aligned with populism’s one commandment. The variety of approaches from Libertarians, moderates, and former liberals could not be greater. Forging a maximum tent populism is exactly what is needed to change populist vibes, real or imagined.

End

At this point you might be asking for some populist plans and policies. Stripping public health agencies of the ability to use force, ending woke bureaucracies, and heavily conditioning university subsidies are a start. Other institutions, such as legacy media, are already on the wane and naturally fall as the one commandment becomes more popular. Ultimately, the case for maximum tent populism is an optimistic case that nonetheless does not take success for granted. It is true that the ruling class is already illegitimate in an increasing number of eyes, but history has taught us that reforming or replacing those institutions does not always follow. The core idea of maximum tent populism is that the ruling class is illegitimate — that the FDA worsens public health, wokeness hurts minorities, and bureaucracies betray democracies. The core populist solution is to realign the institutions of power with their constraints of trust and purpose. It is to fix them if they can be fixed and destroy them if they cannot. This is a message that already appeals to supermajorities. It is currently not a message that organizes or aligns politics. The mission of maximum tent populism will be to change that.